Author: eaumaison (Page 168 of 210)

I’m so starved for 30 Rock and this clip from Conan whets my appetite. Oh Kenneth I miss you!

http://www.hulu.com/embed/C0Wc29325fqBEsZNmoqg7Q

Reading books by James Herriot. I loved his stories when I was a kid and I love them now.

Renting my textbooks instead of buying them at this site. Saved me a lot of money!

Studying the history and basic components of community and public health nursing.

Playing Wordigo. I’m terrible at it and I need a lot more practice!

Baking apple pear pie with cheddar cheese. Yum!

Shopping for the many many birthdays in October.

Savoring the early fall weather.

Discovering that I love chard! I hate cooked spinach and collards and mustard greens, so I’m thrilled to find a leafy green that tastes delicious.

Crafting a large crewel embroidery project.

Drinking coke zero and apple cider. Not together.

I’m surprised how few of these I have eaten. Actually there are many that I have never heard of.

1) Copy this list into your site, including the instructions!
2) Bold all of the sweets you’ve eaten!
3) Cross out any of them that you’d never ever eat.
4) Consider anything that is not bold or crossed out your “To Do” List.

(I also ?? ones I don’t know and !! ones I want to make now!)

1. Red Velvet Cake
2. Princess Torte
3. Whoopie Pie
4. Apple Pie either topped or baked with sharp cheddar !!
5. Beignet
6. Baklava
7. Black and white cookie
8. Seven Layer Bar (also known as the Magic Bar or Hello Dolly bars)
9. Fried Fruit pie (sometimes called hand pies)
10. Kringle ??
11. Just-fried (still hot) doughnut
12. Scone with clotted cream
13. Betty, Grunt, Slump, Buckle or Pandowdy
14. Halvah ??
15. Macarons
16. Banana pudding with nilla wafers
17. Bubble tea (with tapioca “pearls”)
18. Dixie Cup ??
19. Rice Krispie treats !!
20. Alfajores ??
21. Blondies
22. Croquembouche ??
23. Girl Scout cookies
24. Moon cake ??
25. Candy Apple
26. Baked Alaska
27. Brooklyn Egg Cream
28. Nanaimo bar ??
29. Baba au rhum ??
30. King Cake
31. Sachertorte ??
32. Pavlova
33. Tres Leches Cake
34. Trifle
35. Shoofly Pie
36. Key Lime Pie (made with real key lime)
37. Panna Cotta
38. New York Cheesecake
39. Napoleon / mille-fueille
40. Russian Tea Cake / Mexican Wedding Cake
41. Anzac biscuits ??
42. Pizzelle
43. Kolache
44. Buckeyes
45. Malasadas ??
46. Moon Pie
47. Dutch baby ??
48. Boston Cream Pie
49. Homemade chocolate chip cookies
50. Pralines
51. Gooey butter cake
52. Rusks ??
53. Daifuku ??
54. Green tea cake or cookies
55. Cupcakes from a cupcake shop
56. Crème brûlée
57. Some sort of deep fried fair food (twinkie, candy bar, cupcake)
58. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting
59. Jelly Roll
60. Pop Tarts
61. Charlotte Russe ??
62. An “upside down” dessert (Pineapple upside down cake or Tarte Tatin)
63. Hummingbird Cake ??
64. Jell-O from a mold
65. Black forest cake
66. Mock Apple Pie (Ritz Cracker Pie)
67. Kulfi ??
68. Linzer torte
69. Churro
70. Stollen
71. Angel Food Cake
72. Mincemeat pie
73. Concha ??
74. Opera Cake
75. Sfogliatelle / Lobster tail ??
76. Pain au chocolat
77. A piece of Gingerbread House
78. Cassata ??
79. Cannoli
80. Rainbow cookies
81. Religieuse ??
82. Petits fours
83. Chocolate Souffle
84. Bienenstich (Bee Sting Cake)
85. Rugelach
86. Hamenstashen ??
87. Homemade marshmallows
88. Rigo Janci ??
89. Pie or cake made with candy bar flavors (Snickers pie, Reeses pie, etc)
90. Divinity
91. Coke or Cola cake
92. Gateau Basque
93. S’mores
94. Figgy Pudding !!
95. Bananas foster or other flaming dessert
96. Joe Froggers ??
97. Sables
98. Millionaire’s Shortbread ??
99. Animal crackers
100. Basbousa ??

My folks came to visit us this weekend, just for fun! I love just sitting around and catching up with my parents. They spoiled Jem with lots of treats and a new stuffed duck. She adores it and carries it everywhere. Molly got some new catnip toys that she seems pretty happy about. I also got an early Christmas present from Ikea. That store is so great. I can’t wait the two years until they build one in Centennial, CO.

Saturday we went to Amanda’s school and dropped off a trunk-load of young adult novels from our personal collection for her classes to use. It was so fun browsing through those old, musty pages. It brought back memories of riding in the car for hours, me in the backseat reading the latest Sweet Valley High. Here we are laughing at Amanda’s note on the cover of what would have been her newest acquisition:

After that we loaded up Ben and went to Boulder! Oh, how I love and miss living in Boulder. We arrived in time to visit the farmer’s market and I’m so glad we did. I used to walk down the Boulder creek path to the market nearly every weekend when Ben and I lived in our first home there. I would visit every stand, searching for the best prices with the best quality. We found many late harvest delights! Dad took lots of pictures of me packing my sack with yummies. I’m going to make a leek soup with parsnips. Dad insists that I use the entire leek by boiling the whole thing until tender, like his mother used to. I don’t know about that. I’ve always sauteed the tender parts and tossed the thick green tips. I might have to get her recipe. I also picked up some rainbow chard – too pretty to pass by, and sunchokes. I’ve always wanted to try sunchokes but they’re expensive in stores. Not here! Mom went wild for mums and got us each a plant and several for herself. I also picked up a lavendar plant for just $4.00 (instead of $20 at a nursery!). Miranda, I need to take you to the market one day. There’s only 4 weeks left so we have to hurry.

We ate out a lot this weekend, at 3 Margaritas, Brasserie Ten Ten, and Pei Wei take-out. I love taking my parents to NIJ resteraunts (“not in Junction”). This morning we had a delicious breakfast of bagels, fruit, bread pudding, hot chocolate, cider, and OJ. Yum! I sent Dad home with more homemade peppermint marshmallows. He doesn’t mind that I got a little girly with my decorations. These remind me of My Little Pony.

Swoon.

Yes, I’m very distractable when I should be studying for my final test. But when you’re reading sentences like “Lochia rubra lasting longer than 2 weeks postpartum is highly suggestive of sub involution. Some women report scant brown lochia or irregular heavy bleeding. Leukorrhea, backache, and foul smelling lochia may occur if infection is a cause,” you need to take some time to not think about vaginal bleeding.

Sometimes putting on a big sweatshirt and fresh socks can make you feel a lot better about the world.

Toward the end of September is the time to start thinking about Halloween costumes. Why so early? Because inevitably I go all cosplay crazy and need lots of time to A. Make it happen or B. Talk myself out of it. Luckily this year I have it all figured out:

Ah ha hah aha ha. Right. But I do like her hat. And I entertained the notion of being a tired/dead nurse with copious body fluids on her but Brian informed me that that would be “The Lamest Costume Ever.” Here are some other characters that have crossed my mind as cosplay-making goldmines. First those that must be done in pairs:

Amanda and me as the red and white queens. Oh, how I would love to be Carol Channing. NOT AFRAID OF MARMALADE!!! Then there’s sweeney todd and Mrs. Lovett, particularly the beach scene. Can you imagine making that though? I would have to wear it to the beach one day. And we can’t forget the Doctor and Donna Noble, again with Ben filling in the partnership. But where am I going to find a brown pinstripe suit and trench coat in his size for under 10 bucks? Next we have some solo costumes.

Jem, Lindsay Funke, or Patty O’Green. Eh. I feel like these have all been played and/or they would be too difficult. I need something fresher, funnier, and simpler. Time and money just do not allow for much creativity this year. I’ll probably be a ghost. Sigh.

I was assigned to the NICU Wednesday. It was pretty boring because for the most part you just let the kids sleep so they can rest and grow. We do assessments every two hours, alternating doing a hands-on assessment and just taking vitals off the monitors. You want to disturb them as little as possible because it’s stressful. We had a little girl born at 27 weeks (her mother was getting sick fast with high blood pressures) who was on her second day in the NICU. She was under 1 pound. She looked more like a fetus than a baby since she hasn’t put any fat on. Just a large head and skeletal body with frail muscles you can see under her skin. She was getting her nutrition through a central line in her umbilical vein and was breathing on a ventilator. We had to suction her trachea a few times for fluid build-up. She was also hooked up to an ECG, had a pulse oximeter on her foot (that you have to switch feet each day because the little light can burn their thin skin), and a temperature probe stuck to her belly. It must be frightening for parents to see their kid like this. She was on a bed under a radiant warmer and pumped in moist air to keep her from drying out. They use saran wrap over the bed to keep the air in. I guess the fancy “giraffe isolette” was being used by another preemie who was not so badly off but was born first. I loved taking care of the little girl. She was so completely helpless. When she cried it was soundless because of the intubator. Kind of surreal.

Thursday I was assigned to Labor and Delivery. First I did a transition for a newborn c-section just before I started my shift. I gave the baby its first bath and took vitals every 15 minutes. I also gave it the vitamin K shot and put in the eye ointment – those little guys can screw their eyes shut really tight! I saw a beautifully easy birth at 10 am. It was the second in the family. The mom had an epidural and just breathed out her boy in less than 5 minutes once she started pushing. The umbilical cord was crazy long. The midwife was so impressed that she had someone get a tape measure. 44 inches! They’re usually 14-18 inches. I helped a spanish-speaking only (SSO) patient who was having a natural birth. Nooooo thank you. Compared to that gorgeous epidural earlier it was clear which way I should have my first. I really have no motivation to try natural. I hoped to stay through her birth but it was taking much longer than planned (she was already fully dilated) and I wanted to see the c-section at noon. I heard it took another hour and a half after I left before the birth. The c-section was great. I love watching surgery. When they take the uterus out to sew it up I thought it looked just like a roast chicken with its neck sewn full of stuffing, with drumsticks/fallopian tubes on either side. Like I said before, I spoke with the first assistant RN who assisted with the surgery. She told me all about the surgery, the tools, the healing, and her education to get to that role. I tooled around after lunch following a nurse on an antepartum patient. I dropped in for another vaginal delivery, seeing just the end of it up to stitching up the mom. I have to admit by that point I was getting kind of bored with deliveries. I feel the same about c-sections. It was a cool experience, but you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.

One week to go and I’m done with OB.

Ben has taken up his blogging pen. That’s a link to his new site and I updated the link on the right side of this side as well. Please add him to your usual internet browsing!